Help with a rigging question please

[bristol321]

Hi all,
This is my first post on sailnet but have been reading a lonnnnnnngggg time. I finally bought her, 32 bristol and she is beautiful. Except for some old old rigging. Most of it appears to be original equipment. On most of the boat, roller furling, mains, and peripherals I have the wire to rope rigging. I would like to replace this outdated rigging with new. Do I have to go back to wire>rope or can I replace with strictly rope? I was drooling at West marine and noticed that the tensile strength of these new lines is very high is this line an acceptable replacement? As you can probably tell I am a novice so any advice, even hire a pro rigger, would be helpful. If anyone knows of a good website etc anything at this point. Thank you

[Faster]

Nowadays, from a strength/stretch perspective you can certainly go to all "rope" halyards. The only complication with older rigs is whether or not the sheaves at the masthead will handle the line, which will end up being a larger diameter than the original wire.

Some sheaves (pulleys) are designed to handle rope and/or wire (esp. if the wire/rope transition is spliced) but some are only sized for the wire, so getting a line through may be difficult, and the land of the pulley may not suit the line.

Be sure to get some pre-stretched or low stretch line for this purpose - regular dacron yacht braid really isn't the right stuff - (but will do in a pinch, esp if there's no performance criteria involved. - you'll pay a premium for good line, but it's worth it from a sail setting point of view).

So I guess job one is to find out what the masthead sheave setup looks like and go from there.

[Rickm505]

There isn't a need for wire to rope like there used to be. Many riggers won't install them. The new lines out have less stretch than wire. Roller furler not withstanding, buy a diameter that's comfortable on your hands. Keep in mind you're probably going to have to change out your sheaves if they were designed to handle wire.

Rick in Florida

[Giulietta]

Bristol, I like Dyneema. Try it out.

[Sabre66]

Rope - meat hooks= happy sailing! No need for wire to rope...just make sure you're using a line, rated as low stretch. I use Vectran and Dyneema.

[danjarch]

I just replaced the sheaves in the mast head on my bristol 24. The sheaves were 15/32 with a 1/2 inch bushing, I searched all over and finally had to have them custom made out of stainless. It cost eighty dollars a sheave. You're going to have to bring the mast down to change them. But why do you want to replace the wire halyards. They don't strech over time, and stay tighter on a long voyage. you also don't have to replace as much line when it gets old and rotten

[Sabre66]

Originally Posted by danjarch

I just replaced the sheaves in the mast head on my bristol 24. The sheaves were 15/32 with a 1/2 inch bushing, I searched all over and finally had to have them custom made out of stainless. It cost eighty dollars a sheave. You're going to have to bring the mast down to change them. But why do you want to replace the wire halyards. They don't strech over time, and stay tighter on a long voyage. you also don't have to replace as much line when it gets old and rotten

He can use a rope to rope splice to accommodate the sheaves if needed. !/4 " vectran has a breaking strength of 5,000 pounds or more.
h

[sailingdog]

Originally Posted by danjarch

I just replaced the sheaves in the mast head on my bristol 24. The sheaves were 15/32 with a 1/2 inch bushing, I searched all over and finally had to have them custom made out of stainless. It cost eighty dollars a sheave. You're going to have to bring the mast down to change them. But why do you want to replace the wire halyards. They don't strech over time, and stay tighter on a long voyage. you also don't have to replace as much line when it gets old and rotten

Danjarch-

The new synthetic lines with a dyneema or spectra core have about the same stretch as wire halyards, and are far easier on the hands and present less weight aloft. While what you said might have been true ten years ago, it most certainly isn't true today. Also, the rope portion of old wire-to-rope halyards stretched more than enough to make the use of the wire portion far less effective than all wire halyards would be.

The masthead sheaves will probably need to be replaced if you are going from wire-to-rope halyards, as the sheaves at the top of the mast are probably v-grooved sheave suitable for wire. Rope sheaves have a u-shaped groove.

[Giulietta]

I like dyneema...its good

[danjarch]

The sheave has a 3\32 groove for the wire rope but the ledges are on a twenty six degree angle, so it would act like vee groove. If you have the same fitting on your halyards that I do, you could try to end for end the new line through. you need to check, the rope to wire end on mine uses a spliced eye thats to big to go between the sheaves and the top bolts, but the working end has a smaller compression fitting that I got to pass though ( I had the jib halyard backwards ), but I got to do this with the mast laying down. If you get it though, I'd recomend you make a habit of checking your halyard for chafing where it sits on the sheaves, if you don't see any after awile you could assume it's not going to be a problem.